but seriously....even if UConn or North Carolina lose all their remaining games and end up in 7th, 8th, 9th, or 10th place in their conference,
I really doubt they'd be left out of the NCAA Tourney....
and I have little reason to think they'd get dealt with OBJECTIVELY.....and would get bids just because....
they ARE UConn and THEY ARE UNC....their records would be a distant secondary to their names and reputations...
but seriously....listen to literally every talking head in the world. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has either team in. Or close to in. Name me one case, any single one case, where a team that is off of everyone's bubble radar ends up in the field of 65. This committee has left out a 10-6 Syracuse before. Notre Dame several times. They punish the Big East and ACC all the time. Maryland's another example. The committee has no problem angering its most popular teams.
If you doubt for a minute that they'd still get a bid even if they had 14 losses and finished deep in their conference...then I offer this example...
Arizona had 13 losses when they were included. In fact, there's only one case in the history of the NCAA tournament where a 14 loss team got in - Georgia about a decade or so ago (with the #1 SoS).
JUST last year, Arizona was a program in turmoil...coaches coming and going, players up and leaving, recruits backing out...
then they a bunch of super-patsies early to run up a couple wins (Santa Clara, Mississippi Valley State, Florida Atlantic, Northern Arizona, Marymount, etc...)
But they actually LOSE the only 2 games prior to mid-December that were teams under RPI 150!!
The 2 losses were UAB (RPI 46) and @Texas A&M (RPI 36).
And I'm sure scheduling all those pasties to get a bunch of wins sure worked when they beat the pasties such as Gonzaga, Kansas, and San Diego St (RPI 34).
And if you want to get technical, find me a schedule last year where there weren't 5 pasties (RPI 100+). There's not as many as you think.
Then their conference season is bad, going 9-9, picking up 4 of the 9 wins against the two bottom dwellers,
but even tanking it down the stretch losing 5 of their final 6 Pac-10 games!!!!
and they lost in the first round of the Pac-10 Tourney.
The Pac 10 is historically bad this year, but last year, they were good. 9-9 isn't that great, but it's not bad like you say. They actually lost 4 of 5 to end the regular season (3 of those on the road).
So they ended the season with fewer than 20 regular season wins and 9-9 in the Pac-10, but they still got an NCAA bid....even though they were the 6th best team from a relatively weak BCS conference, their RPI was 62!!! (and SOS was NOT Top 25!)
The pac-10 wasn't that weak last year. And while their SoS wasn't Top 25, they did have a whopping 16 games against RPI Top 50. In this case, the pasties they did schedule at the beginning of the year kept them from a sterling SoS.
All that said, I was among many who had Arizona out, and their inclusion ahead of Creighton was curious, but not egrogrious. Arizona was a very exceptional case where the dominoes fell just right with their non-con wins. To think all .500 BCS teams and everyone under 15 losses uniformly get in because Arizona did is just flat-out wrong. Arizona's resume was about the best-case scenario for a .500 Pac-10 team.
You have some good points at the bottom of the post but this chicken little stuff is taking it a bit overboard. It's the borderline mid-major teams getting screwed - the truly legitimate ones have no problem getting in. And you are insane if you think UConn and UNC are in play this late (barring a lengthy winning streak, and even then, it's dicey).
